Ars Poetica

I was trying to describe you to someone..

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51872/human-cylinders

https://percontra.net/archive/5stonept.htm

When music is far enough away the eyelid does not often move

and objects are still as lavender without breath or distant rejoinder.

The cloud is then so subtly dragged away by the silver flying machine

that the thought of it alone echoes unbelievably; the sound of the motor falls

like a coin toward the ocean's floor and the eye does not flicker

as it does when in the loud sun a coin rises and nicks the near air. Now,

slowly, the heart breathes to music while the coins lie in wet yellow sand.

Since the sparks of my sigh ascend toward the heavens, swirling and turning,

the very heart of the lamp of the sky is set alight, burning, turning.

Does one who hangs from the gallows of your curl ever place his feet on earth?

In rapture and delight he gives his life, spinning, turning.

“The Damascus-black of your curl has ruined the Egypt of my heart,” the pigeon said as it delivered the heart's message to you, circling, turning.

Rise, dance, whirl! And before you I bow my head and yield. Let your twisting black curls embrace your silver breast, turning.

If your door were not the Kaaba itself, sun and moon would not circle it day and night like faithful pilgrims, revolving, turning.

For you, the mirrors hang in every place, gazing at each passer-by with hope as they are turning.

O Nejatî, at this loyal gathering it befits the minstrel to dance and chant these fresh-made verses, turning and turning.

The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees Hoard last year's leaves, won't mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn To elegiac dryads, and dour grass Guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness However the grandiloquent mind may scorn Such poverty. No dead men's cries

Flower forget-me-nots between the stones Paving this grave ground. Here's honest rot To unpick the heart, pare bone Free of the fictive vein. When one stark skeleton Bulks real, all saints' tongues fall quiet: Flies watch no resurrections in the sun.

At the essential landscape stare, stare Till your eyes foist a vision dazzling on the wind: Whatever lost ghosts flare, Damned, howling in their shrouds across the moor Rave on the leash of the starving mind Which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.